Breakfast Television (Citytv Toronto)

Breakfast television (Europe, Canada, and Australia) or morning show (United States) is a type of news or infotainment television programme that broadcasts live in the morning (typically scheduled between 5:00 and 10:00a.m., or if it is a local programme, as early as 4:00a.m.). Often presented by a small team of hosts, these programmes are typically marketed towards the combined demography of people getting ready for work and school and stay-at-home adults and parents.

The first – and longest-running – national breakfast/morning show on television is ''Today'', which set the tone for the genre and premiered on 14 January 1952 on NBC in the United States. For the next 70 years, ''Today'' was the number one morning program in the ratings for the vast majority of its run and since its start, many other television stations and television networks around the world have followed NBC's lead, copying that program's successful format.

Format and style

Breakfast television/morning show programs are geared toward popular and demographic appeal. The first half of a morning program is typically targeted at workforce with a focus on hard news and feature segments; often featuring updates on major stories that occurred overnight or during the previous day, politics news and interviews, reports on business and sport-related headlines, weather forecasts (either on a national or regional basis), and traffic reporting (generally common with locally produced morning shows on terrestrial television stations serving more densely populated cities, though this has begun to filter down to smaller markets as Intelligent transportation system networks have spread further into smaller communities). Later in the program, segments will typically begin to target a dominantly female demographic with a focus on " infotainment", such as human-interest, lifestyle and entertainment stories. Many local or regional morning shows feature field reports highlighting local events, attractions and/or businesses, in addition to those involving stories that occurred during the overnight or expected to happen in the coming day.

Morning programs that air across national networks may offer a break for local stations or affiliates to air a brief news update segment during the show, which typically consists of a recap of major local news headlines, along with weather and, in some areas, traffic reports. In the United States, some morning shows also allow local affiliates to incorporate a short local forecast into a national weather segment – a list of forecasts for major U.S. cities are typically shown on affiliates which do not produce such a "cut-in" segment.

During the early morning hours (generally before 10:00a.m. local time), local anchors will mention the current time – sometimes, along with the current temperature – in various spots during the newscast, while national anchors of shows covering more than one time zone will mention the current time as "xx" minutes after the hour or before the hour; the time and/or temperature are also usually displayed within the station or programme's digital on-screen graphic during most segments within the broadcast. (Most local stations originally displayed the current time and temperature only during their morning newscasts, though many began to extend this display within their logo bug to their midday and evening newscasts starting in the mid-1990s, starting in major markets and eventually expanding to stations in smaller markets.) Especially with their universal expansion to cable news outlets in the early 2000s, many news-oriented morning shows also incorporate news tickers showing local, national and/or international headlines; weather forecasts; sport scores; and, in some jurisdictions where one operates, lottery numbers from the previous drawing day during the broadcast (although these may be shown during rolling news blocks or throughout the programming day on cable news outlets, some local stations that have utilized tickers solely for their morning shows have extended them to later newscasts, whereas others only display them during their morning news programs).

The three breakfast morning shows in the United States (''CBS Mornings'', ''Today'', and ''Good Morning America'') air live only in the Eastern Time Zone. (Spanish-language shows air live in the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones.) Stations in the remaining time zones receive these programs on a tape delay, with an updated feed broadcast to viewers in the Pacific Time Zone. In the event of an urgent breaking news story of importance or occasional special events such as presidential inaugurations and coverage of royal weddings, these shows will go live coast-to-coast.

History

United States

Network and local programs

The first morning news program was ''Three To Get Ready'', a local production hosted by comedian Ernie Kovacs that aired on WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia from 1950 to 1952. Although the program (named after WPTZ's channel number, 3) was mostly entertainment-oriented, the program did feature some news and weather segments. Its success prompted NBC to look at producing something similar on a national basis. Following the lead of NBC's ''Today'', which debuted in January 1952, and was the first morning news program to be aired nationally, many other broadcast stations and television networks around the world followed and imitated that program's enormously successful format with news, lifestyle features, and personality.

CBS, in contrast, has struggled since television's early age to maintain a long-term morning program. Though it initially tried to mimic ''Today'' when it debuted a morning show in a two-hour format in 1954, the show was reduced to one hour within a year in order to make room for the new children's television series ''Captain Kangaroo''. The network abandoned the morning show in 1957. From the late 1960s throughout the 1970s, the ''CBS Morning News'' aired as a straight one-hour morning newscast that had a high rate of turnover among its anchors. In January 1979, the network launched the innovative "___day Morning" series, which focused more on lifestyle and feature reports; this format, however, was relegated exclusively to Sundays after two years, and still airs under the title '' CBS News Sunday Morning''. It was not until 1982 that ''Captain Kangaroo'' ended its run on weekdays (before ending altogether in 1984), allowing CBS to expand its morning show to a full two hours. However, the high rate of turnover among anchors returned. An ill-fated comedic revamp of the show, ''The Morning Program'', debuted in 1987. After that, however, came ''This Morning'', which has so far had the longest run of any of CBS' morning show attempts. ''This Morning'' was eventually cancelled 12 years later, being replaced by ''The Early Show'' in 1999; ''The Early Show'', in turn, ceded to the new version of ''CBS This Morning'' (this time featuring a format focused more on hard news and interviews, excising lifestyle and infotainment segments) in January 2012.

ABC was a latecomer to the morning show competition. Instead of carrying a national show, it instead adopted the ''AM'' franchise introduced by many of its local stations in 1970. KABC-TV's ''AM Los Angeles'' launched the national career of Regis Philbin and was a direct predecessor to his syndicated talk show '' Live!'' ''AM Chicago'' on WLS-TV would later evolve into ''The Oprah Winfrey Show''. ''The Morning Exchange'' on WEWS-TV was Cleveland's entry into the franchise; with its light format, ABC (after a brief but failed effort to launch the Los Angeles version nationally as '' AM America'') launched a national program based closely on the format of ''The Morning Exchange'' in November 1975 under the title '' Good Morning America''. ''GMA'' has traditionally run in second place (ahead of CBS but behind ''Today''), but has surpassed ''Today'' in the ratings a few times in its history (first in the early 1980s, then from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s and again regularly since 2012). Since the 1980s, ''Live!'' (now hosted by Kelly Ripa and Ryan Secrest) has been produced and distributed by ABC's syndication arm, primarily for ABC stations (although not exclusively, as it is carried on stations affiliated with other networks), but produced by ABC's New York City owned-and-operated station, WABC-TV.

PBS, the United States's primary publicly funded broadcast network, has historically aired children's programming and Lilias, Yoga and You during the morning hours. From 1974 to 1995, PBS, through its affiliate Maryland Public Television, offered ''A.M. Weather'', a 15-minute weather update staffed by the National Weather Service.

Fox, the last of the "Big Four" broadcast networks, does not have a morning show and has only once attempted such a program; the network attempted to transition sister cable network FX's ''Breakfast Time'' to Fox as ''Fox After Breakfast'' in 1996, to little success, but instead has ceded to its local affiliates and Fox Television Stations, which have programmed fully local morning news programs that are at parity or have overtaken their Big Three network counterparts.

The CW (and before that, its co-predecessor The WB) carried '' The Daily Buzz'' for its The CW Plus (as well as its The WB 100+ Station Group) from 2002 to 2014, in lieu of a national program; that program was also mainly syndicated to affiliates of The CW and MyNetworkTV (and predecessors The WB and UPN) as well as several independent stations until its abrupt cancellation in April 2015. Generally since then, outside of a few select CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates, stations usually program Infomercial, a local extension of a Big Three sister station's morning newscast during national morning shows, or as Sinclair Broadcast Group did from July 2017 until March 2019, returned to programming for children under the KidsClick block. Sinclair intends to program a national morning rolling newscast for those stations by the first quarter of 2021.

A few of the major Spanish language broadcast networks also produce morning shows, which are often more festive in format. ''¡Despierta América!'' (''Wake Up America!'') is the longest-running Spanish language morning program on U.S. network television having aired on Univision since April 1997; Telemundo made several failed attempts at hard news and traditional morning shows during the 1990s and 2000s before it finally experienced success with ''Un Nuevo Día'' (''A New Day''), which launched in 2008 under the title ''¡Levántate!'' (''Get Up''), and became a formidable competitor to its longer established rival following a 2011 format retooling.

Local television stations began producing their own morning shows in the 1970s, most of which mirrored the format of their network counterparts, mixing news and weather segments with talk and lifestyle features; stations in many mid-sized and smaller markets with heavy rural populations also produced farm reports, featuring stories about people and events in rural communities, list of agricultural product exchanges data from the previous day and weather forecasts tailored to farmers (although the number of these programs have dwindled on the local level since the 1990s, three such programs still exist in national syndication, the weekdaily ''AgDay'' and the weekend-only '' U.S. Farm Report'' and ''This Week in Agribusiness'' (the latter of which was founded and remains hosted by former ''U.S. Farm Report'' personalities Orion Samuelson and Max Armstrong), which have also received national distribution on cable and satellite via RFD-TV; the latter program had also previously aired on WGN America until 2008).

More traditional local newscasts began taking hold in morning timeslots (mainly on stations that maintain their own news departments) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These programs began as half-hour or one-hour local newscasts that aired immediately before the national shows. However, since that time, they have slowly expanded, either by pushing an earlier start time or by adding additional hours on other stations that are owned, managed or which outsource their local news content to that station, thereby competing with the network shows. Similarly, following the launch of Fox in the late 1980s, many news-producing stations affiliated with major networks not among the traditional "Big Three television networks" or which operate as independent stations began producing morning newscasts that compete in part with national counterparts in part or the entirety of the 7:00 to 9:00a.m. time period; by the late 2000s, these stations began to expand their morning shows into the 9:00a.m. hour (where they normally compete with syndicated programs on ABC and CBS stations, and the third hour of ''Today'' on NBC stations). The expansion of news on Fox affiliates, along with advertising restrictions involving with the Children's Television Act, effectively ended the morning children's television market on broadcast television by the mid-2000s.

Beginning in the early 2010s, stations began experimenting with 4:30a.m. and even 4:00a.m. newscasts in some major markets (and even gradually expanding into mid-size and some smaller markets), pushing local news further into what traditionally is known as an overnight graveyard slot. Some local morning newscasts, which formerly had both softer "morning" musical and graphical packages and lighter news, along with feature segments with local businesses and organizations, now resemble their later-day counterparts with hard news coverage of overnight events. Some locally produced morning shows that utilize a mainly infotainment format still exist, most prominently among some large and mid-market stations owned by the E. W. Scripps Company (which inherited the ''Morning Blend'' format originated in 2006 by the Journal Media Group following its 2015 acquisition of that company's stations) and Tegna Inc. (which inherited many of the local talk/lifestyle shows originated by Belo – such as ''Good Morning Texas'' on Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA – prior to the 2014 acquisition of the latter group by the predecessor broadcasting unit of the Gannett), and often serving as lead-outs of national network morning shows.

Pay television

Cable news outlets have adopted the morning show format as well. ''Fox & Friends'' on Fox News, ''Early Start'' and '' New Day'' on CNN respectively follow the networks' morning show format. MSNBC's '' Way Too Early with Jonathan Lemire'' and '' Morning Joe'' follows a format more reminiscent of talk radio and incorporates panel discussions; it is also the only conservative show in the network's otherwise liberal-leaning lineup. Also following the "talk radio on TV" format is Fox Business' ''Imus in the Morning'' (a video simulcast of the radio program, which itself aired on MSNBC until 2007), ESPN2's ''Golic and Wingo'', CBS Sports Network's ''The Morning Show with Boomer'' (formerly on MSG Network), and NFL Network's ''Good Morning Football''. The Weather Channel originally has long featured forecast programs with a primary emphasis on business travelers and work commuters (including '' WeatherScope AM'', '' Weather Center AM'' and ''Morning Rush''); however with its shift toward a mix of weather and infotainment programs, it has begun featuring personality-driven morning shows: currently '' Wake Up With Al'' (hosted by ''Today'' weather anchor Al Roker, which also incorporates features and interview segments similar to that found on ''Today'' and other morning programs) and '' America's Morning Headquarters'' (hosted by former ''Good Morning America'' weather anchor Sam Champion, which has a more straight weather format with some feature segments).

Entertainment channels such as VH1 and E! have also aired morning shows (such as ''Big Morning Buzz Live'' and ''That Morning Show'', and the 2020 version of ''E! News''). NBCSN (as NBC Sports Network) briefly aired a highlight-intensive morning show, '' The 'Lights'', with virtually no conversation (or even any on-camera anchor) and consisting only of highlights and scores of daytime and evening sporting events that occurred the previous day (NBCSN later abandoned this approach in favor of sports talk programming). ESPN's morning programming consists of an early episode of '' SportsCenter'' summarizing the night's highlights, followed by a traditional sports talk show, '' Get Up!''.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, breakfast television typically runs from 6:00a.m. to 9:15 or 10:00a.m.

Television broadcasting hours in the United Kingdom until early 1972 was tightly regulated and controlled by the British government under the control of the Postmaster-General. Restrictions were placed on how many hours per day could be used by broadcasters for television. By the mid-1960s, this was allocated at seven hours per day (Mondays to Fridays) and 7.5 hours per day (Saturdays and Sundays), thus providing a 50-hour broadcasting limit per week. Certain programming was exempt from these restrictions (schools, adult education, religion, sport) however there was no allocated time provided for the establishment of breakfast television until the early 1970s.

In January 1972, under the then Conservative government, the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications, Christopher Chataway announced to the British parliament all restrictions imposed would be lifted and broadcasting hours per day could now be set by the individual broadcaster. By October 1972, both BBC and ITV were provided daytime television, with the commercial channel ITV taking full advantage of the relaxed broadcasting hours.

However, due to financial issues and the economic problems of the 1970s, breakfast television was put "on the back burner" for the remainder of the 1970s.

After a nine-week trial-run in 1977 on the regional television stations Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television, the Independent Broadcasting Authority considered breakfast television so important that it created an entire franchise for the genre, becoming the only national independent television franchise other than news service ITN. At the end of 1980, this franchise was awarded to TV-am. However, launch delays for TV-am allowed the BBC
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